Taylor Mitchell

Although the Xhosa ritual represents a coming of age into “manhood” - initiates repeat “I’m a man” throughout the process - the South African film Inxeba (The Wound) complicates this trajectory by portraying different understandings of…
Read More...

2017 was a revolutionary year for democracy in Africa. On September 1st, Kenya’s Supreme Court made history by nullifying the country's last contentious election —for the first time in Africa— and ordering a new vote. Many incumbent…
Read More...

On August 8th 2017, Kenyan voters went to cast their votes for either Raila Odinga of the ODM or Uhuru Kenyatta of the Jubilee party — only to have their votes later nullified by the Supreme Court. This wasn’t Odinga’s first election loss,…
Read More...

On November 13, CNN released a video of slave auctions in Libya. The video showed an off-screen auctioneer offering black men as “big strong boys for farm work,” rattling off dinar figures until one man, later identified as Nigerian, is…
Read More...

On October 30th, a procession of trucks, tractors, and farmers dressed in black lined South Africa’s roadways. The protestors, a majority of whom were white, gathered to voice outrage at the uptick of “farm murders” in South Africa and to…
Read More...

In 2008, mothers of teething infants visited their local Nigerian pharmacies to purchase some medicine to ease their child’s pain. Shortly after, 84 of those children passed away in a scandal that dominated international news headlines. The…
Read More...

After a contentious election, Kenya’s supreme court made history on September 1st by rejecting the recent re-election of president Uhuru Kenyatta and by ordering a new vote. This decision marks the first time in Africa when an opposition…
Read More...

Like Nigeria and Kenya, Liberia has followed suit in the trend of outsourcing schools to multinational corporations. On July 15th, Liberian education minister George Werner announced the expansion of Partnership Schools for Libera (PSL), a…
Read More...

China’s increasingly large footprint in Africa has generated both optimism and fear. The debate over whether China will improve African economies through sustainable infrastructure or undercut local markets through export-focused trade has…
Read More...

The reputation of South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, has gone steadily downhill since the country began “flirting with recession” in 2016. The extent to which Zuma is responsible for South Africa’s current economic “junk status,”…
Read More...